Now might be the right time to evaluate your desires…
This article is inspired by a post I saw on the internet from one of my favorite podcasts; I Said What I Said. This issue speaks directly to me and I also know so many other people would resonate with this topic.
Right now, I want you to do a brief exercise; think about the first five things you fantasize about and earnestly desire. Think about those things. Then ask yourself, why do you want each of these five things? I want you to also think of the answers to the question critically.
My reason for this short exercise is that I recently realized that sometimes, based on how the world has become, the desires we earnestly pursue as individuals might not be what we truly want. Instead, they might be things we have been influenced to think that we want. I will give personal examples to explain this further.
Growing up and becoming an adult, I had an idea of very few things I desired. These desires originated from what I deeply wanted, the things I wanted to achieve to feel satisfied, the things I had genuine interests and it was so for a while until it was not.
As time went on and I had more and more access to social media, and social media means access (directly or indirectly) to more people’s lives and their businesses, my desires started to shift a bit. I did not notice it at the time but looking back now, I see it properly. The effect of social media on the mind is never sudden or instant, it starts in bits; pieces of influential information or knowledge (good or bad), drop into your mind and you might think it is controllable but constant access to such information forms a pattern in your mind that contributes to shaping who you are.
My desires started to shift and I found myself wanting different things, things I would not ordinarily consider if it were just up to me. For example; there was never a time when I had a genuine interest in nursing as a career. Even as a child, I never considered it. Becoming an adult, it was still the same. Then I remember being in contact with certain people I used to know and turned out a lot of them were in that career path and they were seemingly doing so good (my definition of doing good in this context is portraying beautiful lifestyles on the gram). I also saw how respected they also seemed to be and there I was, studying a course that was not even considered prestigious. This started to affect my mind, and slowly I started considering nursing. This was a bit serious, I almost in fact took a form to apply for nursing school, not because I was genuinely interested In BEING a nurse but just because I saw my peers and I felt I needed to go into that field.
I also remember another situation. I have never really been passionate about relocating out of the country. While a lot of people fantasized about it, it was never really it for me. My dream idea of leaving the country was just traveling to other places for visits and vacations. It never felt like something I NEEDED to do. Then suddenly, there was a wave of relocation all around me, everyone seemed to be relocating to different countries and others had active plans to. At the time, I knew deep down that relocation was not the ideal plan I should be having, I had more important problems I had to deal with and relocation would just make everything messier but I started finding myself talking about relocation too, I started to think about traveling out even when I knew I had no need for it yet. This affected me for a while before I snapped out of it. It was not what I really wanted, it never was. I still have other minor and major examples of other situations like this.
Social media plays a great advantage in affecting our minds whether or not we agree. There are things that you ordinarily would not pay attention to or make a big deal of until you come on social media. Now, I also believe in the good part of this; social media brings more exposure and this exposure might make you realize what you truly want or enlighten you on desires you never knew you had deep within, but the most important thing is knowing if these things you now desire are really from the heart and if they are genuine.
Evaluate those desires you have, why do you want them? Are they really what you want? Or are they things you want because everyone else is into it and it seemingly looks good on them?
